Kate Middleton Had a Hand in Designing that $675 Potato Chip Hat

Remember that straw-colored hat that Duchess Catherine wore to Zara Phillips' wedding last weekend? The one that looked a lot like a potato chip (a Pringle specifically)?
New details about the hat reveal that Duchess Catherine actually had a hand in designing it.
While Kate shopped her closet for her wedding outfit, wearing a lace dress by Collette Dinnigan and a brocade coat by Day Birger et Mikkelsen that she'd worn to wedding in 2006, her hat was brand new and bespoke.
The Duchess enlisted milliner Gina Foster to create her wedding topper, People is reporting, though that floral detail on the underside of the hat was all Kate's idea. That detail was a great touch--it added interest and femininity to a shape that might otherwise have been overly potato-chip-y. Kate had a lot of input in the design of her wedding dress as well--could there a budding designer emerging?

New details about the hat reveal that Duchess Catherine actually had a hand in designing it.

While Kate shopped her closet for her wedding outfit, wearing a lace dress by Collette Dinnigan and a brocade coat by Day Birger et Mikkelsen that she'd worn to wedding in 2006, her hat was brand new and bespoke.

The Duchess enlisted milliner Gina Foster to create her wedding topper, People is reporting, though that floral detail on the underside of the hat was all Kate's idea. That detail was a great touch--it added interest and femininity to a shape that might otherwise have been overly potato-chip-y. Kate had a lot of input in the design of her wedding dress as well--could there a budding designer emerging?

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"It's a slight departure from her normal hat style but it's quite good to try different shapes," designer Foster said of her creation, which retails for $675. "It was contemporary yet sophisticated."

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Foster, who was given just 10 days to create the hat, said Kate was "a normal person I guess, she's very down-to-earth and polite."

Hilariously, the Daily Mail is reporting that the hat earned mixed reviews and that "some likened it to a Pringle crisp, while in the U.S. the hat was dubbed 'the potato chip.'" I did some Googling and I'm pretty sure "some" and the whole of the U.S. was just me and some other fashion crazies. Hey, I call it like I see it.

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For Duchess Catherine's first royal wedding that was not her own, she wore a cream colored embroidered coat with a hat that looks a lot like a potato chip only with flowers on the underside. Kate being Kate, the outfit she wore to Zara Phillips' wedding to Mike Tindall--sans hat--is a repeat look. The Huffington Post is reporting that Kate wore the same coat back in 2006 at the wedding of Laura Parker Bowles' to Harry Lopes.
The Duchess looks beautiful and radiant as she always does--maybe even more so since the attention is not focused as much on her for this event. Check out her look (and that hat) from all angles. Don't you think that hat looks like a Pringle? Just a little?

Last week, Yvonne York, the Huffington Post's royals correspondent, rather confidently claimed that little known Brit designer Sophie Cranston was designing Kate Middleton's wedding dress: "I've reported many exclusive details on the royal wedding, but my biggest scoop is undoubtedly the identity of Kate Middleton's wedding dress designer," she wrote. "I can reveal that Sophie Cranston of the Libélula label is said to have won the coveted commission to make Catherine's wedding dress."
The Daily Mail seemed to confirm the report, adding that Cranston would merely be the dressmaker while Middleton herself, drawing on her art history background, would design her own wedding dress.
Speculation over who would design Kate's wedding dress has run rampant: everyone from Bruce Oldfield to Sarah Burton at McQueen to Jasper Conran has been named as a possible contender for the job. So if it seemed too good to be true that the wedding dress mystery would be solved so neatly (and that the commission had gone to a little known designer), that's because it was.

Another day closer to the royal wedding, and yet another name is floated as the designer of Kate Middleton's all-important wedding dress.
We've heard Sarah Burton for McQueen, Bruce Oldfield (a favorite of Princess Diana) and the latest name to be mentioned in contention for the prized commission is Jasper Conran. And now, a new name to add to the mix: Sophie Cranston, designer of the Libélula label.
Yvonne York, Huffington Post's royal's correspondent, is reporting that Sophie Cranston has designed Kate Middleton's wedding dress. Middleton famously wore a vintage-inspired black velvet coat by Libélula to a wedding this past January.
So why haven't we heard Cranston's name until now?